To a degree, SpaceX is modern equivalent of Bell Labs when it comes to space technology. They attracted a lot of frighteningly smart people and untied their han

To a degree, SpaceX is modern equivalent of Bell Labs when it comes to space technology. They attracted a lot of frighteningly smart people and untied their hands. When thinking about Bell Labs etc., I often come to the conclusion that barriers matter more than anything else. If you force your engineers and scientists to hold long pointless conferences and produce some papers on regular schedule, plus submit their various work-related demands to an arbitrary set of rules and decision-makers, the result is similar to throwing sand into a mechanical machine. But these limitations usually exist because of money shortage / funding, and few people or organizations have enough money to just shower them on their eggheads, like Bell Labs once did.